To enhance depth perception and thus data comprehension, additional depth cues are often used in 3D visualizations of complex vascular structures. There is a variety of different approaches described in the literature, ranging from chromadepth color coding over depth of field to glyph-based encodings. Unfortunately, the majority of existing approaches suffers from the same problem: As these cues are directly applied to the geometry’s surface, the display of additional information on the vessel wall, such as other modalities or derived attributes, is impaired. To overcome this limitation we propose Void Space Surfaces which utilizes empty space in between vessel branches to communicate depth and their relative positioning. This allows us to enhance the depth perception of vascular structures without interfering with the spatial data and potentially superimposed parameter information. With this article, we introduce Void Space Surfaces , describe their technical realization, and show their application to various vessel trees. Moreover, we report the outcome of two user studies which we have conducted in order to evaluate the perceptual impact of Void Space Surfaces compared to existing vessel visualization techniques and discuss expert feedback.

中文翻译：

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用于在容器可视化中传达深度的空隙空间表面

为了增强深度感知，从而增强数据理解，额外的深度线索通常用于复杂血管结构的 3D 可视化。文献中描述了多种不同的方法，从景深上的色度深度颜色编码到基于字形的编码。不幸的是，大多数现有方法都存在同样的问题：由于这些线索直接应用于几何表面，血管壁上的附加信息（例如其他模态或派生属性）的显示会受到影响。为了克服这个限制，我们建议空隙空间表面利用血管分支之间的空隙来传达深度和它们的相对位置。这使我们能够在不干扰空间数据和潜在叠加参数信息的情况下增强血管结构的深度感知。通过这篇文章，我们介绍Void Space Surfaces ，描述它们的技术实现，并展示它们在各种容器树中的应用。此外，我们报告了我们进行的两项用户研究的结果，以评估将空空间表面与现有的血管可视化技术进行比较并讨论专家反馈。